I just want a “real” coffee!

But my plans were derailed by the fact that I can’t sit down with a nice big cup of coffee and write. Why? Because they don’t exist in France.

It’s starting to annoy me.

In my days working as a journalist, I had, as I believe most professional writers do, certain writing rituals. One of those was that I had to have a large cup of hot coffee, with milk and sugar, sitting next to my computer. This is why I spent approximately half of my income on lattes at Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

But now, I’m in the land of teeny-tiny expressos. Don’t get me wrong – they’re good. But they last for about 3 minutes. You can’t carry them around with you in paper cups. You have to take them sitting at a cafe.

It seems like such a shame, too, because there are so many lovely pastries here just begging to be eaten, shared with a nice BIG cup of steaming coffee.

But, alas, I can’t find any. So I’m sitting here at D’s school, with half an almond croissant.. and nothing to drink it with. We didn’t have time to make coffee this morning, and no one does ‘coffee take out.’